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Rolf Stommelen jumps aboard the Alfa Romeo T33/TT/3 he shared with Nino Vaccarella in the May 5, 1972 Targa Florio, the pair retired with valve-spring failure on lap three.

The car carries #1 in recognition of Alfa’s fantastic win the year before when local lad Nino Vaccarella won with Toine Hezemans aboard a T33/3 3-litre V8. The brilliant Schlegelmilch shot below captures Nino during his winning ’71 drive.

It was a great year for Alfa Romeo/Autodelta, they won the Brands Hatch 1000km (Andrea De Adamich/Henri Pescarolo) and Watkins Glen 6-Hour (De Adamich/Ronnie Peterson) as well, not to forget class wins at Monza, Spa and Zeltweg. The opposition 3-litre flat-8 Porsche 908-03s and flat-12 Ferrari 312P were plenty quick too, not to forget the 5-litre 12-cylinder Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512S’.

Vaccarella, sharing the T33/TT/3 shown in the painting with Rolf Stommelen during the 1972 race. Despite the Porsche 908/03 inspired T33/TT/3 spaceframe chassis – lighter, weight-forward, still V8 powered (TT is telaio tubolare or tubular chassis) – making its debut in practice at Targa twelve months before, the four Autodelta entries still couldn’t knock off a late-entry singleton Ferrari 312PB 3-litre flat-12 driven by Arturo Merzario and rally-ace Sandro Munari.

Nanni Galli and Helmut Marko were 17-seconds behind the winning Ferrari and catching it hand-over-fist at the end of the race, Marko set a lap record of 33min 41sec in his epic chase. De Adamich and Toine Hezemans were third in another Alfa T33/3, while the Vic Elford/Gijs Van Lennep duo were out with engine failure without completing a lap. As recorded, Vaccarella/Stommelen were out with a broken valve spring after completing three laps. 38 cars finished the gruelling event with a massive 37 DNF’s, five due to accident damage.

The first of the privateers placed fourth, the Antonio Zadra and Enrico Pasolini Scuderia Brescia Corse 2-litre Lola T290 Ford FVC is shown above at Collesano in a classic Targa shot, they also won the 2-litre class.

The winning Ferrari (above) completed the 792km journey in 6hr 27min/48seconds. The Armco-installer must have been well-lubed with grappa when he executed his contract.

This wonderful race was living on borrowed time for yonks, it became a national race from 1974 until 1977 when the race ceased, albeit the Targa Florio Rally was a round of the Italian Rally Championship for some years.

Tribute events have popped up around the world, not least Targa Tasmania, itself in the news in recent years because of fatalities as a consequence of a mix of (mainly) amateur drivers, high speeds and unyielding eucalypts.

Alfa Tipo 33 history in brief…

Alfa Romeo returned to sportscar racing in 1967, the early period of the 2-litre Tipo 33 Periscopica is covered in this article; https://primotipo.com/2015/06/23/alfa-romeo-tipo-33-periscopica-mugello-19/ and here on the evolution of the Tipo 33 V8 as fitted to single-seaters; https://primotipo.com/2019/11/29/mclaren-alfa-de-adamich-alfa-single-seater-v8s/

With a view to class and outright wins Chiti and his team started development of a 3-litre Tipo 33 which used an aluminium monocoque chassis rather than the complex cast magnesium chassis of the earlier 2-litre (and some 2.5-litre) machines.

Fitted with 2998cc 90-degree V8s giving between 400bhp @ 9000rpm and 440 bhp @ 9800rpm over the life of the 1969-72 program, and first six, then later five-speed Alfa gearboxes, the cars were first tested in early 1969.

With ongoing development, class wins at Imola and Zeltweg were achieved in 1970, with a magnificent run of success, as covered above in 1971.

Inspired by the ultra-light 908/03, and detuned-F1-powered Ferrari 312P, a new spaceframe T33/TT/3 was built, tested and raced in 1971 before an assault on the 1972 World Championship of Makes. While Alfa Romeo finished a very good second to Porsche in the 1971 World Sportscar Championship (72/51 points), things were grim in 1972 when Ferrari beat them resoundingly, 160 points to 85, with the Alfas not taking a win.

Ferrari won 10 of the 11 qualifying rounds with their 312PB, electing not to contest Le Mans on the basis that their detuned F1 engined cars wouldn’t last the distance. A 3-litre detuned F1 engined Matra MS670 V12 driven by Henri Pescarolo and Graham Hill took an historic win for France that day instead. While on one level Ferrari’s Le Mans non-appearance was savvy – they had the WSC locked up – it was also gutless, they dipped out on the only sportscar race that really matters every year.

Context for Ferrari’s amazing 312PB dominance in 1972 is that they sacrificed their 1971 5-litre 512M program by selling cars/512S update kits to privateers but elected not to race the 512M as works cars, effectively gift-wrapping the final 5-litre Era endurance title for Porsche. It’s staggering in the sense that Ferrari could only finance the build of these 25 5-litre cars due to the sale of of his business to Fiat in 1969.

The pay-off was that the single 312P prototype that raced (driven mainly by Jacky Ickx and Clay Regazzoni) throughout 1971 was turned into a panzer division of evolved, ready-to-rock 312PBs in 1972. Despite ongoing development at Maranello, Matra caught Ferrari napping in 1973, winning five of the ten rounds, Le Mans and the title that year, change is the continuum after all.

Alfa Romeo returned with the Tipo 33 TT/12 in 1973 – spaceframe 3-litre 500bhp flat-12 – and finally took the World Championship of Makes in 1975 with that car, and the World Sportscar Championship in 1977 with the Tipo 33 SC/12 – where SC is Scatolato, a boxed or monocoque chassis 3-litre 520bhp flat-12 and Tipo 33 SC/12 Turbo – monocoque 2.164-litre 640bhp flat-12 – open sports-prototypes.

Credits…

Yuriy Shevchuk, Rainer Schlegelmilch, Pete Lyons, Getty Images, Bruno Betti, MotorSport Images, ‘Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 : The Development & Racing History’ Peter Collins and Ed McDonough

Tailpieces…

Evocative shot of Helmut Marko on-the-hop in his furious pursuit of the leading Ferrari 312PB in the closing stages of the 1972 Targa. It really was an impressive drive of the T33/TT/3 on this most toughest of tracks.

While these days best known as Red Bull’s stock-picker, Marko had the makings of a fine GP driver in 1972. He was, with Gijs Van Lennep, the reigning Le Mans champion aboard a fearsome Porsche 917K, but his racing career ended with the loss of sight in his left eye after an incident at Clermont Ferrand.

A stone thrown up by Emerson Fittipaldi’s Lotus 72D Ford penetrated his visor while at the wheel of a BRM P160B (above) during the closing stages of the July 1972 French GP. Marko later commented that, new to the car, his seat wasn’t fully sorted so he was sitting 15cm higher than in the P153B. But he was still happy to be at the wheel of a more competitive car, he qualified it sixth too, but that 15cm made all the difference with that small, sharp, missile…

Finito…